Quotes About Persistence

Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.

Things have their own pace, and if we work with that pace and anticipate the issues correctly, we can have good results.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

I think, no matter how successful you are, there is some struggle of one kind or the other for every actor at every level. There are times when your work progresses at an extremely slow pace.

I can't stop, I always have to try and keep a good pace and that's what I'll do.

I wasn't overtly ambitious, or tried to get films by hook or crook. I always did things at my own pace.

People think that because people do religious stuff, that's all we're supposed to do. But with God's help, everything that He wants me to accomplish, I'm going to do it. It's all about pacing.

I remember climbing Mont Ventoux at the end of the day, and it was so, so hard. You have already three, four hours in your legs of cycling, and then you have to climb probably the hardest mountain on the course. And then you have to ride back to your car and pack up your stuff.

'The bigtime for you is just around the corner.' They told me that first in 1952 - boy, it's been a long corner. If I don't hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I'm gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.

I just wanted to play as long as I could. When you stop playing, you're not going to get it back. When you don't enjoy it, that's the time to pack it in.

I don't want to pack everything into one year and then do nothing the rest of my life. I think it's important to do things bit by bit.

It is not like if one film of mine doesn't work then I am going to pack my bags. It all depends on how much determination I have to want something.

The first time I did a show, I definitely didn't get any money. My friend just let me do this show. I was so nervous: my mic didn't work, and I was like, 'Urgh.' It was terrible. It was a dingy club off of the highway, but all these people came. It was packed out.

I write every day weekdays for about 5 hours, mostly longhand on legal pads. It has gotten neither harder nor easier, sadly or happily.

Whether it's one play in the NFL or 1,000 plays in the NFL, your pads will come off eventually.

I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.

Write a page a day. It will add up.

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

The important thing for me as an artist is to keep going back to the page and doing what I do.

I'd been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I'm crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn't one of them. I'm still not one of them.

There's a point I set for myself, and it's an arbitrary point, when I think no matter happens, I'm going to finish that book. And that's when I get to page 100. I have to see it out.

I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.

I have to learn sometimes 25 pages at a time. The takes can last 20 minutes - we do big, long takes. You always hope that you get a couple of days in between so you can learn the next one because you can't keep everything in your head at the one time.